


Dance With Me

by pirategirljack



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: 12 monkeys theme week 2016, Dancing, F/M, Fluff, fill-in fic, only a little sad i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 00:26:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7486080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12 Monkeys Theme Week 2016 - Day 4 - Casserole!</p><p>Cole gets a radio and wants to take a break from the mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance With Me

Cole was at the little table by the window, fiddling with a radio he'd picked up somewhere. He was like that, always bringing stuff home. Cassie was at the coffee table, folders spread out all around her on the couch, but they'd hit a dead end and the light from outside was getting low and yellow. She pushed her heels off--who would have thought she'd be wearing heels again every day?--and stretched her legs and back out as Cole found a station and music filled the quiet room.

She couldn't place the song, but it was one of those crooner ones her grandmother had still liked when Cassie was a kid, before everything got rough when her mom died, and it was a weird feeling, being nostalgic while knowing she could drive for a while and see the source of her nostalgia. But also knowing everything would be different, because how she remembered it hadn't happened yet. 

But it was a nice song, and it made he smile.

Cole must’ve been watching her, because when she did, he stood and crossed the small space between the table and the couch and held his hand out to her, just short of shyly.

She lifted an eyebrow, but her heart was already speeding up in her chest. It embarrassed her a little--she thought of herself as hard and sharp now, and here she was getting all wobbly over Cole looking like a kid at his first school dance. They didn't have time to get wobbly; the only time they had was quickly running out and it was getting them nowhere.

“Dance with me?” He asked, and she couldn't say no to that tone. “It's been a long time since that party.”

“In more ways than one,” she said, as she slipped her hand in his and he pulled her to her feet.

It was only a little awkward as she moved in close and he slipped his hand around her waist. His warm, strong hand, that stayed at exactly the right place between hip and boob to be respectful, and exactly as far around her waist to indicate a hopefulness she found so precious she sort of wanted to never leave this moment. 

They were time travelers; surely there was a way to freeze time or bottle the good moments without the Red Forest destroying it all?

She moved a little closer. Cole had never caught onto the most-of-the-past trend of wearing cologne and aftershave, but he still smelled good, like soap and like his own self. She remembered something about genetic compatibility and it making someone's pheromones make them smell nice to you, and thought they must be very compatible. And tried to shut that thought down. And only mostly succeeded.

Cole was barefoot too; he liked wearing all the clothes from wherever they landed, the hats and shoes and suits, but they'd had a long and frustrating day and they were both about as stripped down as 1950s semi formality allowed without actually changing into pajamas or just being in their underwear. And now they were dancing.

And she was thinking about underwear.

Cole wasn't a fancy dancer--he didn't spin her or dip her, there was no complicated footwork--but he'd improved since that night she taught him the basics. And the song wasn't the sort for a fancy show of skill, and this moment was just so very Cole, intimate without being pushy, sincere without being fawning. A little shy. A little oblivious to the finer points of social interaction. Things were not great; they hadn't been in a long time. But this moment, in the golden afternoon light, in their cozy hotel room, felt good, and it had been a long time since she felt good about anything.

She looped her arm up around his neck and pulled him a little closer still.

“Did that girl from 1944 get you to practice?” She asked, teasing, but also suddenly desperate to know whether anyone else had been held like this.

Cole huffed out a laugh, and his arm around her waist tightened a little, like he was reassuring her, or himself. “She'd have been happy to, given half a chance. But no, I--”

“What?”

“It's just…” 

“Oh come on, you can't leave things half said like that!”

Cole smiled, looked away, embarrassed, and the song changed, so he looped her to the other side of the room, a little clumsily, buying time. “In 2016, when Ramse and me were there for those months.”

“Yes?”

“I looked it up. How to dance. One night.”

She felt her eyebrows creeping up, but she was determined to let him say this without interruption. She wanted to hear every word of it. 

“I like dancing. It's...good. And I sort of thought, if I ever saw you again, if you still liked me, I'd ask you to dance. That night at the museum was one of the best nights of my life, before we had to get back on the mission.”

“The tandoori skewers?”

That huff of a laugh again, the real smile. Cassie thought her heart would break from how beautiful he was, how messed up everything was outside this moment. “Yeah. And the art, and the music. And you.”

They were very close.

He pushed her hair out of her face without letting go of her hand, looped it back behind her ear. 

Drew his fingertips down her jawline.

She shivered.

“That was one of the best nights of my life, too,” she said, and found that her voice had gone a little rough, a little faint. “After that, everything became such a mess with such momentum. But that night...I used to think about that night when it was cold and dark in 2044.”

They were barely swaying now, and she was up on her tiptoes, her bare feet almost on top of his. One corner of his mouth quirked up, almost a smile, but his eyes were so sad and deep. “It's always cold and dark in 2044.”

“Not when you were with me.”

“I seem to remember a lot of cold shoulders and cold words…”

“Still better than being apart.”

“You mean that?” And he looked at her like he couldn't quite believe that, like he didn't believe he would be so lucky. This time, she pushed his hair out of his face.

“Every word.”

They stayed like that for a moment, a wonderful, terrible trembling moment, and anything could have happened. But nothing did, and the song changed to an ad, and the spell was broken.

"I'll go get us some dinner," Cassie said, moving away, but more gently than she would have before they'd danced like this. "I'll be back in twenty and maybe we can look at the files with new eyes."

"Yeah," Cole said, and pushed his hands into his pockets. "Maybe."

But it didn't sound like that "maybe" was talking about the files or the case, it sounded like a comment on something neither of them had said, and it terrified her--but also gave her hope.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the dance mentioned in my other post for today, Touch.


End file.
